Ferris State University’s Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia soon
may need to change its motto — “A little room with a big purpose.”
Recently the museum received a $250,000 challenge grant from the DTE
Foundation to help create a larger permanent home for its collection.
Since 1996, the museum has been housed in a single small room at Ferris’
Arts and Sciences Commons. An expansion of the current space will allow
for enhanced public viewing of its collection of more than 9,000
artifacts. The museum’s mission is to use items of racial intolerance to
promote racial understanding and healing.

“We have been doing
good work creating an environment where people can talk intelligently
about race and race relations. The grant from the DTE Foundation will
help us do an even better job,” says David Pilgrim, Ferris’ vice
president for diversity and inclusion, and the museum’s founder.

When completed, the new space will allow visits by larger groups. Also,
instructional displays will help put the artifacts into their proper
historical context.

The DTE Foundation grant is especially
timely because of the growth of the Jim Crow Museum’s collection.
Recently, the museum received two important gifts from private
collectors. The Vaughn Collection was built by Otis Vaughn, who as a
child picked cotton and experienced first-hand the effects of Jim Crow
laws and customs in the south. This remarkable collection of artifacts
documents the African American experience from the shores of West Africa
through the Civil Rights period and into the present.

The
other gift the museum recently received is a collection of approximately
100 rare dolls assembled by Marc Charbonnet, a successful designer and
owner of the New York interior design firm, Marc Edward Charbonnet
Associates. His collection of dolls includes both those meant to demean
African Americans as well as those that celebrate black culture.

In addition to a virtual tour of the museum, a question of the month
column, letters to the museum and more, you can help match the DTE
Foundation grant at the museum’s website, www.ferris.edu/jimcrow.

This story was originally published in the Spring 2011 issue of Ferris Magazine.